Lamination Pro is a great program for doing designs based on laminating a board up and making multigeneration cuts.
I use WTP and then SP the most. SP has a great paint feature for doing designs.
The brick pattern in the standard in segmenting. There is no way in either program to rotate a ring a specific degree. That said,if you wanted to eliminate the brick pattern in WTP so two rings match up exactly, you can insert a middle ring and make the thickness 0. Visually you will not see the ring and ring 1 and 3 will line up.
In WTP by adjusting the Inside and/or outside diameter of the ring will change the wall thickness in the Calculation box. (Board Width)
I always tend to overbuild. If I want a 6 inch ring I build a 6 1/8 to 6 1/4 ring with a width of 3/4 to 1". I will turn down to the exact specs I want.
Ah ha! I was thinking the same thing regarding your "dummy ring" idea, but not realizing I could make it invisible by using 0".
I agree with you entirely regarding the "overbuild dimensions." But in my case, not using a computer to help me design my projects, I just needed the padding to make sure I could pull off the designs. My first project (designed by hand and absolutely no idea of what I was doing) resulted in rings that were turned all the way through that had to be replaced, or were an inch thick, making the interior unsightly (luckily it was a vase with a metal insert).
I'm starting to get itchy, thinking about designing a new vase project with WTP. I have a giant oak burl that I'm going to use for the majority of it, and am excited about using it to help me design/locate accent rings, as well as a simplified feature ring or two.
I understand the uses of SP and LP, so I will try to test their applications for my work before the trial period is over. I do like certain automated features of SP, but am thinking they won't be necessary if I truly master WTP.
LP looks interesting, but I'm having trouble wrapping my head around what I'm seeing past gen 1. And I really don't see how these later generation boards are cut into segments. I'm going to be gone for a week without any time to work on this, but when I get back, I'll attack the tutorials on it. Hopefully the answers to my questions will be there.